The writing of cultural descriptions is properly experimental and ethical.
The constructed artificial nature of cultural accounts….
Historical predicament of ethnography, that it is caught up in the invention, and not the representation of cultures.
AS I write this, I am caught between remembering the opening of the Heritage Month in Davao and preparing to read a paper on the predicaments and possibilities of contemporary Philippine studies in the Ateneo de Manila University. In the first, there is certainty in what constitutes Filipino culture and the call is to celebrate it, to remember; in the second, the urgent attention is to raise questions about cultures.
The certainty in Davao is supported by a government—as with the other governments—expressing belief in the power of culture and bringing them down from the air to the plains of legacy and heritage, in fact to a room where “experts” could talk about the importance of culture. That, indeed, if we need a month to remind ourselves of this need to celebrate national heritage, it is because it is clear to us that we are a nation, and we have heritage to share and, to use that cliché, hand down to the next generation. The assumption, of course, is that the next generation will need that heritage and that they deserve that. The assumption also is that there is clearly a heritage and we know how to present that. The gathering on May 11 and 12, in Ateneo de Manila, which is a two-day conference-workshop, “seeks to reflect on the question of the ‘Filipino.’ As with many academic endeavors, the purpose of these scholars is not really to come up with answers but with questions. We, academics, if you care to know, are anxious about giving answers. The fashionable thing to do is to posit queries and present positions. Contrary to being prescriptive, academics generally are timid precursors of change. Our arrogance and daring are in our bravery to ask, to ponder and not be afraid to be ponderous.
If conferences are drinking parties, then on those two days, you could listen to old “jokes.” These are concepts that have been bothering particular scholars. Give them a forum and they will take those concepts out of the dustbins of disbelief and air them out. Woe to the listeners who have listened to the same cultural laments for he or she will once more confront the same questions that are expected to trigger interest in possible answers. This is not bad per se; this means the good scholars continue to allow some thoughts chance to germinate, to assume solidity.
What shall I do on my day? I am tired of reading papers. One of the convenors of the conference, Dr. Jayson P. Jacobo, a literary scholar and critic, assured me there was no need to have PowerPoint presentation. Thank God for enlightenment. What he oriented (“orientation” is such a loaded term, the word’s etymology coming from an old French work, which means to face East— and East is where we are, from the prepositioning of the West) me was that I could have a conversation. I could talk about my continuing research projects, which could mean my unceasing obsession with cultures.
On that day, therefore I shall share with my audience my efforts to make sense of cultures—Bicol Culture in my capacity of being a Bikolano researcher and cultural worker; Filipino culture in my work as art and media critic compelled to write about the central rather than the marginal; and my persistent interest in the power of anything in the guise of the global to blur boundaries and markers.
The conference will allow me to further my research on our almost infantile desire to claim originality by abusing certain aspects of cultures in our nation. The many ethnolinguistic communities are our victims when we start feeling small that we do not have something we can call “original” Filipino. In cultural programs, we dance the dance of the “natives” to pursue authenticity. If we can secure the services of the Aeta, then that makes us giddy with our proximity to the authentic. We ran after the indigene, forgetting that we are all indigenous.
My passion for popular culture has afforded me rediscoveries of artefacts that, singled out, reveal why this need to go back to the origin can be fatal. So, we have music. Melodies have defined generations and histories for us. But what happens when our beloved kundiman is discovered to be originally a Tango music? Is the value of that song diminished?
In the realm of popular music, where history and its blurring mechanism has the least power to intervene in what is “at-the-moment” happening, I will convey my ongoing fascination of songs that find themselves translated/appropriated/distorted/transported onto another location. The result of this process is the overwhelming nausea that, perhaps, we do not have really our kind of music, our own culture.
Take the case of the Samar-Leyte song, “Lawiswis Kawayan.” Its versions have grown through the years, with that of the Mabuhay Singers’ becoming the dominant one. In its Tagalog incarnation, the song is turned into a lambingan/tampuhan (literally “making tender gestures” and “sweetly sulking”) scenes where a man asks the woman to go somewhere, with the woman casting doubt on the purity of the man’s intention, and the man apologizing for his indiscretion. In the Samar-Leyte versions—for there are many—the song has other characters. There is the “bird” with no manners. There is also Manong Palabyo who sells eggplants and who has a “secret.” Then there is Inday whose room is violated by the ill-mannered “Pikoy” or parrot.
I will talk about the songs that we claim to be ours but originally were in Japanese. The journey of these songs from an aesthetic point of view reveal not so much the Japanese elan (for that is theirs) but the Filipino (translators, in this situation) and their penchant for the maudlin, the simplistic.
Take the case of Eddie Peregrina’s “Memories of Our Dreams” (“hold me close and never say good-bye/I will love you and without you I will die”). This song defined the masses of the mid-1960s and 1970s. Whenever TV shows memorialize those periods, this song is abused for reference. The song, however, is an adaptation of the Japanese “Yume wa yoru hiraku,” which means “my dreams open/bloom at night.” The song is dark and edgy. And we are dark and edgy for not acknowledging our source.
Take the case of Sharon Cuneta’s monster hit, “Itanggi Mo” (literally “Deny It’). In its Tagalog form, the song is reduced to a senselessly vapid sulking. Its original, “Koibito yo” (“Lover”), is poetry with lines that plea: Please laugh and tell me your farewell is a joke. It talks of a bench now rotten because of the rain and there, no one sits to sing a song…. The lover continues: A man is running on the gravel road, he makes me stand still as if he wants me to forget.” Kisetsu wa megutti kuro kedo… The seasons come and go but they come back again.
But I will not merely judge these adaptations and translations. We will learn from these travels that artefacts are made to undergo. Perhaps, our love songs cannot be dreary. Perhaps, the people in the urban center are not ready for folksongs that hide issues of incest and about faiths that have remained gloriously pagan even after long years of religious colonization.
As we are academics, I shall borrow from the introduction of the book edited by James Clifford and, which says that ethnography, that seemingly complete description of cultures, has a “historical predicament” because it is “caught up in the invention and not the representation of culture.”
Those lines are my starting points, my excuse.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano